Protecting BLM Lands

Lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management are vast and diverse, full of beauty and history. We believe these lands are worth preserving.

The BLM Action Center

Public lands are precisely that: lands for and owned by the public. The approach of The Wilderness Society’s BLM Action Center is grounded in the concept that American citizens play a pivotal role in determining management for approximately 250 million acres of public land managed by the Bureau of Land Management. We work with the BLM, the public, and conservation organizations to bring about public policies and on-the-ground management decisions that protect wildlands and carefully balance conservation with development on our shared lands.

Otero Mesa, New Mexico, by Mason Cummings

The BLM Action Center aims to shape the future of BLM land protection in America’s beloved wild places like Utah's canyon country, Colorado's Vermillion Basin and Otero Mesa in southern New Mexico.

The lands managed by the BLM are changing quickly as a result of human activity. Energy development, off-road vehicle use, and a multitude of other activities have their place on public lands, but can also threaten our remaining wild places. The Wilderness Society works to ensure our remaining wildlands are protected for hiking and camping, wildlife habitat and many other natural, cultural and scientific values that benefit from wilderness conservation.

Our research, analysis and legal expertise support informed community participation in land use planning and public lands management decisions. From helping local citizens weigh in on land management planning to providing scientific research that informs smart policy development, we engage in the entirety of the policy and decision-making process to ensure conservation has a place.

The focus of our work

Achieving the BLM's conservation mission

Araviapa Canyon, Arizona, by Scott Jones, flickr.

The BLM is responsible for managing a wide range of lands and resources, as well as the types of activities that take place on those lands. Energy development and grazing are two well-known activities the BLM manages, but there is another very important mission. Conservation is an integral, yet often overlooked, part of the agency’s responsibilities. We work to help the BLM embrace its conservation legacy by ensuring that conservation objectives are integrated into BLM plans and policies.

The BLM Action Center is dedicated to protecting particularly valuable public lands: those with wilderness characteristics. Lands with wilderness characteristics have exceptional natural features and are places Americans can enjoy and find solitude. Across landscapes and in BLM land use plans, protecting lands with wilderness characteristics yields benefits to both conservation and outdoor experiences.

Providing opportunities for non-motorized recreation

McKenna Peak, Colorado, by Soren Jespersen

An extensive network of off-road vehicle trails and roads traverses much of our public lands. Keeping some of our land accessible to a non-motorized experience is an important means of protecting our natural heritage. We consider the increasingly rare opportunities for quiet and primitive recreation on BLM lands to be a resource that all people should be able to experience.

Balancing energy development with conservation

Oil development at Jonah Field, Wyoming, by Ecoflight

BLM lands increasingly play host to energy development, which has real, often unavoidable consequences for wild places, wildlife, water, and recreation. We support processes that minimize the footprint from energy development and ensure that impacts to a landscape from energy development are offset by conserving wild lands and important habitat. We are encouraging the BLM to promote a smart from the start energy strategy that avoids development in the most sensitive areas and guides development to the right place at the right pace.

Addressing the climate crisis on public lands

Climate change poses significant challenges for protecting America’s remaining wild places. The lands managed by the BLM are no exception. Creative and comprehensive policy decisions can ensure these large tracts of land will support wildlife and outdoor recreation in the face of a rapidly changing climate for generations to come. Adapting to climate change should be a priority for BLM land management, which is why our policy team works to support smart and careful renewable energy development on BLM lands and position our public lands to adapt through science-based land management planning.

Deployment costs keep dropping, desperate legal challenges from the dinosaur fossil fuel industry continue to be dismissed, and for the first time ever more solar energy was brought online than any other energy source.